Sohan Karuna

Customer success lends to B2B business success

There’s no two ways about it, customer success is crucial to B2B success. Especially because  it is 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain existing ones. Accordingly, quarterly business reviews or qbrs have emerged as a pragmatic solution to the challenge of customer churn in modern B2B organizations.

What is a quarterly business review?

A quarterly business review (qbr) is a strategic review meeting with your clients and their executives that occurs (usually) every quarter. In this meeting, which is usually led by the customer success team and their managers, businesses review the efficacy of their services on the client’s business, discuss any improvements, future plans, redress client concerns, present the business’s progress, and all in all perpetuate good customer relationships.

A productive QBR is designed with the client’s goals in mind, and to strategically align them with the customer success team’s goals. The most important aspect of a qbr is to open a dialogue between business and clients, and not to make a sales pitch to them. emphasizing too much on presenting the business’s progress will overshadow that agenda.

Setting up an effective quarterly business review (QBR):

1) Review frequency: though present in the name, a quarterly business review does not have to occur every quarter. Sometimes, businesses might require a longer time interval between meetings to ensure adequate value. One of the reasons could be that your business might require more time to produce quality content and data for effective reviews. Another reason may be the logistical challenges in arranging meetings with the right audience/stakeholders required for a meeting. If a business cannot produce consequential insights for a review, then there is no reason to hold one.

2) Meeting agenda: creating an agenda forms a structure for your review, upon which your clients can base their expectations and questions on. A missing agenda risks your meeting attendance.A well-planned agenda that is organized and ahead of time for the clients is an essential component of a QBR. The contents of an agenda might include:

• Previously discussed plans
• Innovations and improvements to product/services
• Previewing upcoming products
• Customers’ future business plans
• Business near future roadmap
• Reporting progress, roi and other analytics
• Redressal of challenges

3) Transparency: as discussed in the last point, having your attendees pre-approve your agenda before the review shows a great deal of transparency and builds trust with your customers. But besides that, being honest about your failures and shortfalls shows your business’s willingness to improve. At the end of the day, the goal of these reviews is to build your relationship with your clients, and sincerity goes a long way.

4) Presenting the data: when it comes to presenting your business’s progress, showcasing your ROI could be at the cornerstone. Highlighting your ROI shows growth and the value retained in procuring your business’s services. It's also the perfect metric to underscore your track record & other progress in conjunction with your future goals.

Outside of ROI, presenting benchmark data is vastly appealing to your clients as they’re interested in learning where your business places itself among competitors every quarter. specific metrics that clients might require based on questions and the discussion from previous quarters also come in handy.

5) Progress and future QBRs: After highlighting your business’s progress, putting forward the plans for your next qbr is a great segue. This could also be a good time to pitch in some future milestones, along with previews of new products and services. This is even a good opportunity to present innovations at a conceptual stage. Just remember to seek your client’s approval for your plans and future changes.

Common QBR mistakes:

• Lacking a plan: QBRs are value-added reviews. The most important element here is time, the review cannot afford to be haphazard, and it must have clear objectives that allow for value to be transferred. The quality of the content & discussions need to leave the attendees, and especially the executives, with more than what they had before the review. The main focus of a QBR is not to just present reports, but to have them done ahead of time and to emphasize on business value.

• Lacking feedback: The bottom line isn’t that you’re listening to feedback during a review, but that you are not asking for more. Being proactive, and presenting the chance for your clients to provide valuable feedback is an opportunity lost if you don’t make use of it. running a customer satisfaction survey or having a q&a after every review is an example of being proactive about feedback. 
• Beating around the bush: keep your meetings brief and avoid fluff in the form of irrelevant data and discussions. Most qbr meetings are scheduled to last anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes. This isn’t a lot of time once you have allotted a good chunk of it for a q&a. Ensure only material points are being discussed, and don’t forget to schedule and plan out the next meeting.

Planning a QBR comes with its own host of problems. distinguishing your goals from your client’s. managing different expectations, adding value to your reviews and so much more. but to truly win over your clients, you would have to go over and beyond. go as far as asking your clients what it would take for them to opt out, for them to choose another service. and while most businesses wouldn’t ask that, you should, because your customer is another business’s prospect and if you don’t stick your neck out, your competitors will

The following blog is an overview of account scoring. It goes over the basic steps in creating a scoring scheme as well as the various functions of an ICP (Ideal Client Profile). It also distinguishes account scoring from ABM (Account-Based Marketing) and assesses how lead scoring and account scoring deal with different B2B clients.

Catch our previous piece on lead scoring models explained here!

What is account scoring, and how is it different from account based marketing?

You might have heard that account scoring is somewhat analogous to ABM (Account-Based Marketing). This isn’t far from the truth. Think of account scoring more as a means to improving ABM. In that sense, they are consubstantial. ABM is a broader approach to marketing that targets key accounts or accounts that are most likely to convert and generate the most revenue. This is based on using an ICP (Ideal Client Profiles) which states the attributes of those target accounts. ABM also deals with compartmentalizing those key accounts, designing the method of engagement, and collaborating with other departments.

Meanwhile, account scoring is a method of ranking and sorting your target accounts based on a scoring scheme. Just like in ABM, account scoring uses an ICP as a filter to identify your target accounts. By scoring your target accounts you can better ascertain the value of organizations, on which you can expend your limited resources on. Account scoring is comprehensive with its scoring schemes by prioritizing unique attributes of target accounts.

Steps to create account scoring:

‍1) Ideal Client Profile: Your ICP in account scoring has two functions. The first is to use your ICP to make target accounts or rather filter out a range of target accounts before scoring them. The second function of ICP acts like an explicit scoring model as in lead scoring. This means using your ICP as a benchmark while scoring organizational traits, like the size of the company, ACV, location, etc. This becomes an inevitable part of your scoring scheme.

2) Creating a Scoring Scheme: A scoring scheme is nothing but the basis of assigning a score to a target account. As mentioned in the previous step, your ICP has the role of designing your explicit scoring. With that sorted, you can establish some implicit scoring criteria. Such as rewarding points based on email engagement, content download, and web analytics. For example, an organization visiting a review page could earn 3 points, while traffic generated through PPC could earn 7 points. The value of certain touch points and engagements can be determined by using a revenue attribution tool.

3) Customisation: A scoring scheme is never linear. All elements within a scheme might not apply to every organization. Different organizations and stakeholders might have different uses for your services and different valuations for their touch points. Hence, it is important to measure the relative impact of the scoring scheme on your target accounts. It is also crucial to revise your ICP, rearrange their permutations, create several ICPs, and compare them.

Account scoring vs lead scoring

One could argue that both these scoring methods are somewhat similar. Both their scoring models have an implicit and explicit element to them. So, is it just a matter of what they’re called? The most important distinction here is that account scoring deals with organizations while lead scoring deals with individual leads.

Account scoring views a client as an organization with several decision makers involved. While lead scoring is better suited for dealing with a single decision maker. This is why lead scoring is the better choice for clients with a lower ACV, this implies a low level of decision making involved, with only one or few decision makers. And because of its individualistic nature, lead scoring has a stronger emphasis on engagement.

Account scoring on the other hand is better suited for high ACV organizations with more decision makers. This necessitates the need to create key accounts for an organization rather than scrutinizing an individual lead. It also works better with ABM and account-based engagements. The use of ICP has more prominence in organizations and takes the number of stakeholders and ACV into account.

‍Contemporary B2B marketing is closing the gap

In the marketing realm, it’s a common precedent to pit B2B and B2C marketing against each other. And rightly so, given their inherently dissimilar attributes with who they’re selling to, how long it takes to make a purchase, etc. With that said, research and technology have proven there are a lot alike between the two. They might be subtle but understanding those subtleties are impactful for the long haul.

Technology has shown us the prevalence of digital customers in B2B buyer personas is similar to that of B2C. With B2B marketing showing a progressive interest in becoming more brand-oriented, research has shown us the importance of emotional connection at higher levels of a B2B element value. Like in B2C, building a social media presence or making more personalized content to promote branding has shifted the agenda of B2B marketing. To emphasize further, here are 4 things B2B marketing could adopt from B2C marketing.

4 things b2b could adopt from b2c marketing

1. Marketing to People:

This translates to the personalisation of your marketing strategy that will tend to customers’ emotional and logical needs. B2C marketing for the longest time has honed the art of delivering personalized messages to individual prospects. While historically B2B marketing has been informational/educational akin to the needs of the several decision-makers involved. B2B prospects are nurtured with their need to research.

You’ll be surprised to know that adding a personal element to your interaction in your marketing promotes perceived brand value. In fact, B2B customers are 50% more likely to convert when they see personal value, and are 8x likely to pay a premium for a comparable service. The use of dynamic content that corresponds with a user’s needs on a website, and B2B email marketing to establish a personal tone, are some examples of personalisation. This isn’t to diminish the informational/professional element of B2B marketing but to add a personal touch to the same.

2. Building a Community Around the Brand:

From a business relationship to fans of the brand. Presumably, this is much harder for a B2B organization to achieve, while it’s second nature for most B2C brands. OnePlus for example built a community forum that gives users access to news, discussion and social features. This not only promotes the brand and its products but also allows for more customer engagement.

There are different channels through which B2B companies can build their communities. This can include creating a subreddit and uploading infographics on YouTube. Using these mediums could prove to be more useful than building your own forum thanks to the already well established B2B marketing communities within them. If you are keen on building one with a more tight-knit approach, consider forming a public discord server or a public slack channel.

When it comes to building a social media presence in B2B, having a social media presence alone won’t cut the mustard. Instead, a continual effort to build through customer engagement is key. B2C brands often create community posts and polls on Twitter, create short quizzes, answer queries, etc. This dynamic however is hard to build over the professional overtone, but adopting its practice should facilitate some creative and original content. It is also important to utilize a wide array of social media platforms, and not ones that might generate the most prospects.

Influencer marketing is something B2C marketing is all too familiar with. And for good reasons, people are more likely to purchase something with more credibility. But before you do so, you would have to sell the product to your influencer first, which involves a great deal of good faith and trust. The influencer marketing space in B2C is cataclysmically large, to scale the same for B2B would be pretty impractical. Instead, an affiliate program that incentivises existing customers to recommend the product or service to others. Even leaving reviews on authentic platforms like G2 increases the credibility of your brand by having other brands and marketing leaders vouch for it.

3. Buyer Personas and B2B Mobile Traffic:

Building a strong buyer persona is something B2B marketing could use to improve its content strategy and create more engaging content that addresses its challenges. This means understanding your target audience. In B2B this represents all the decision-makers involved, their pain points, goals and most importantly intent data. Research shows that B2B companies that utilize buyer personas in their content strategy perform better.

Speaking of buyer personas, it’s not unusual to expect a large portion of B2C buyers to use their mobile devices for research and queries. But what if I told you the use of mobile phones is gradually becoming the source of a lot of B2B search queries, over 50% of it to be precise. More buyers are using their phones for B2B research during work and leading organizations are generating 40% of revenue through it. Considering that mobile-first B2B generates higher engagement, site traffic, search queries and leads. Maybe it’s worth adopting from our B2C cousins.

4. Privacy and Privacy first marketing:

Becoming a privacy-first business is a big deal in this current digital climate. Given that the customer pool for the average B2C marketer is larger and its not so admirable track record with data security and privacy. More B2C marketers are becoming more proactive with their data and how they interact with it. This concerns B2B marketers as well, from a business perspective, data security is paramount. Educating yourself in B2C data security practices can be useful as most of the regulations governing these practices and the use of cookies stems from B2C practices in the past. To learn more about becoming a privacy-first business refer to this blog.

It's not hard to believe that the line between B2B and B2C marketing is getting blurry. At the very least they share the same goals. To generate as many leads and convert them. While contemporary B2B marketing adopts features of B2C marketing, the same could be said the other way around. Their culmination of experience in lead generation and conversion brings a lot to the table for the future of marketing methodology.

According to a study by Gartner, B2B buyers spent only 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers and merely 5-6% of the entire time with the sales representative of each vendor. This means that the sellers have little opportunity to influence the buyer's decisions.

Buying decisions in B2B typically involve six or more individuals. And they prefer to do their own research instead of relying on the vendor's sales team. Their research includes industry publications, blogs, case studies, pricing, and customer reviews put out by the vendors. They often engage back and forth, moving from your website to your competitors. They take their time, compare, and decide on the best choice.

Hence, the interaction with the sales rep usually happens late in the buyer's journey. Marketing hence plays a much larger role in influencing the buying group's decision.

The back-and-forth engagement also results in multiple touchpoints across many channels. And by using marketing attribution models, a marketer can determine which touchpoints contribute to the conversion.

Many B2B marketing attribution software has emerged in recent years. But the big question is, how can these help? Why is it important for marketers? And which models should your marketing team be using?

Let's dive into the world of marketing attribution and find out!

Outline:

• What is marketing attribution? 
• What is the difference between marketing attribution, revenue attribution, and digital marketing attribution?
• Why is marketing attribution important/ useful?
• What are marketing attribution models?
• Common challenges of marketing attribution
• Why should CMOs consider marketing attribution
• How to pick the right marketing attribution tool?

What is Marketing Attribution?

Marketing attribution determines what marketing actions help a business reach its goals, like getting leads or growing revenue.

Suppose you're a marketing manager for a software firm. Your goal is to get more leads and earn more revenue.

To do this, you use various marketing channels such as Google search, organic search, LinkedIn ads, and so on. Meanwhile, the sales team contacts potential customers through emails and calls.

However, it can be challenging to know which channels work best and which need improvement. This is where marketing attribution comes in.

Attribution software acts like a GPS for your marketing efforts, helping you track the performance of every channel and campaign.

For instance, say your LinkedIn ads get the most leads, but your webinars don't perform as well. You can see this with the help of attribution software and change your strategy. Instead of putting more investment into an ineffective channel, you can focus on the channels that bring in leads and revenue.

The main goal of attribution is not to prove the marketing team's value but to help the team improve their efforts and get better results.

What's the difference between marketing attribution, revenue attribution, and digital marketing attribution?

‍When it comes to attribution, chances are you've come across a whole range of terms—namely, the following three.

1. Marketing attribution
2. Revenue attribution
3. Digital attribution
   

Well, be relieved to know that all these terms virtually mean the same things. They simply differ in terms of context. 

Marketing attribution refers to the process where you can quantify the influence of your channels on business metrics such as meetings, pipeline, and revenue. 

Revenue attribution is identical in essence but has a slightly different perspective. Here, the focus is more on assigning value to channels to estimate their revenue impact. 

And finally, digital marketing attribution is centered around attributing digital touchpoints. It exclusively focuses on the digital customer journey. 

Why is marketing attribution important (and useful)?

Have you ever heard the saying, "you can't manage what you can't measure"? Well, that's exactly what marketing attribution is all about.

Imagine a company, ABC, that sells enterprise software solutions to other businesses. The company has a sales team, a digital marketing team, and a trade show presence to generate leads and close deals. The sales team receives leads from a variety of sources, including:

1. The company's website through a contact form
2. A trade show where the company had a booth
3. An email campaign sent to target prospects
4. A referral from a satisfied customer

In this scenario, it's important for ABC to understand which campaigns are driving the most conversions. This way, they can allocate their budget and resources more effectively.

For example, let's say the company's sales team closed a deal with a lead that came from the trade show. It's difficult to determine whether the trade show was solely responsible for the conversion or if other marketing efforts also played a role. This is where B2B marketing attribution comes into play.

With marketing attribution, ABC can identify the marketing touchpoints that drove most conversions. This further allows the company to see which marketing channels are the most effective in driving sales. 

The tool helps the company to measure and attribute the success of your campaign and optimize and improve your strategies.

What are the functional benefits of marketing attribution?

1. Marketing ROI Optimization

With marketing attribution, B2B teams achieve a better and broader picture of each channel's cost-to-revenue ratio or ROI.

By understanding every channel's influence on lead conversion, pipeline, and revenue in relation to their cost, you can effectively quantify marketing performance. Ultimately, this leads to our next point — prudent marketing investment and spending.‍

2. Improved Marketing Spends

Using marketing attribution can make a significant impact on your marketing investment. This is because it provides crucial information about the performance of different marketing channels and tactics. Armed with this information, you can optimize your spending to achieve the end business objectives. Instead of distributing your investments evenly, you can double down on the channels that are actually performing better.

Consider this example. Imagine you have $10,000 to spend on a marketing campaign. Without attribution, you might split the money evenly between different channels. But with attribution, you might find that Linkedin conversational ads work best and are responsible for 80% of your conversions. So, in this case, you could put 80% of your budget towards Linkedin conversational ads and the rest towards other channels.

In short, marketing attribution helps you make decisions based on data instead of guessing. By knowing what's working, you can spend your money in the best way possible and get the biggest return on your investment.

3. Attribution and Content Marketing

Content marketing remains the best way to communicate effectively with customers and educate them about your offerings. And with the help of marketing attribution, you can take content marketing to the next level.

How?

Your content should engage with the target audience and drive demand for your products/services at every stage of the buying journey. For that, you need to create content that's tailored to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Marketing attribution plays a crucial role in this process. It provides insight into which content resonates with your audience and leads to more conversions. Traditional CRM and MAP systems credit conversions to content only by a First Touch model (if the content was the first interaction the prospect had), which can be very misleading. 

You can also track how different pieces of content contribute to your pipeline and revenue. This allows you to optimize your content strategy.

For example, you may find that a particular blog post is driving a lot of traffic to your website but is not resulting in any conversions. In this case, you can analyze why this is happening and make changes to the content to increase its effectiveness.

Keep reading to learn more about the ROI of B2B content.

4. Mapping Out The Customer Journey

The use of attribution isn't limited to understanding channel influence on conversion. It's also a powerful tool to make sense of marketing's impact across each step of the funnel.

You can use it to identify the relationship between channel interactions, which touchpoints work together, and their relative probability of occurrence down the funnel. All of which help you map out your buyer's typical journey.

Marketing attribution models

Attribution models allow you to understand the different touchpoints in the customer journey and how each of them influenced your prospect to convert. The main goal of attribution models is to help marketers determine their campaigns' performance

For example, consider the following. 

A customer reached your website through a LinkedIn ad. Then, the customer further engages with your website content, like blogs and case studies, before becoming a lead. And finally, they are converted (booked a demo) after clicking on a retargeting ad.  

Now, depending on your business goals, the attribution model you choose assigns credit to different touchpoints. 

If your objective were to create awareness of your brand or product, the credit would be assigned to the first touchpoint. In this case, the LinkedIn ad. But if you were looking at conversion alone, the credit will be given to the last touchpoint, which is the retargeting ads. 

There are other scenarios too, where you assign credit to multiple touchpoints. But as we said, it depends on your business objective.

With that said, there are mainly two types of attribution models.

1. Single touch models
2. Multi-touch model

Types of attribution models

Single-touch 

As the name indicates, allocate the credit to a single touchpoint. Some types of single-touch attribution models are;

1. First touch 
2. Last touch
3. Last non-direct touch 

These types of attribution models are used mainly by businesses with a clear and straightforward marketing funnel and want to track the impact of specific touchpoints on conversion

Multi-touch

Again, as the name implies, multi-touch models allocate credit to multiple touchpoints in the customer journey. The main focus of this model is to give a more accurate picture of your marketing channels' impact on conversion.

Some of the types of multi-touch attribution models are:

1. Linear attribution model
2. Time-decay attribution model
3. U-shaped attribution model
4. W-shaped attribution model

Here, take a look at our take on the seven types of attribution models with examples that can help you understand the attribution models better. 

So, how to choose the suitable model for your business?

Choosing the right model for your business can be a challenge. As the saying goes, ‘all models are wrong, but some models are useful. But it's essential to select the one that helps you answer the specific questions you have in mind.

With that said, let's look into the factors that affect choosing the model and how to select the right one for your business.

Some factors that affect the choice of attribution model are as follows.

• The nature of the buyer journey cycle - This includes the length of the sales cycle and the number of decision-makers.
• The nature of the product. Does the product belong to an established category or a new one?
  

Here are seven steps to help you choose the right attribution model: 

1. The first and foremost thing to do is to understand your business goal. Ask yourself, "What do I want to achieve with attribution modeling?". The answer can help you select a model that aligns with your business goals.
2. Speak with your customer to understand their customer journey and the touchpoints involved. Anecdotal assessments of how each touchpoint contributed to conversion can help you select an appropriate model.
3. Evaluate different attribution models. Compare the strengths and weaknesses of each model and see how they align with your business goals.
4. Do A/B testing. Test each model and compare the results. This will give you a better understanding of the model that will work best for you.
5. Some attribution models require more data than others. So, consider the data you have and select the model that aligns with the data you have.
6. Constantly review and adjust the models. It's crucial to ensure that your model is relevant and accurate. So, as your business grows and evolves, you should review the current one and make the necessary changes.
7. Evangelize the results of the selected attribution model and get buy-in from relevant teams - field marketing, digital marketing, and sales so that all equally accept the results from the model you select.
   

Common challenges with marketing attribution

Whilst the benefits of attribution analysis are clear and unquestionable, there are certain challenges and limitations which need to be highlighted. We will briefly discuss a few B2B attribution challenges here. You can follow up on the link to learn more about the B2B attribution challenges and how to overcome them. 

Complex customer journey: 

B2B customers often go through a lengthy and intricate buying process. There is usually a group of 4-6 people researching and deciding between vendors before moving to purchase. Not to mention the multiple touchpoints across many channels that influence decision-making.

Marketers can't determine which touchpoints are affecting the sales pipeline and revenue without proper attribution. This makes it hard to track the success of their campaigns and make improvements.

However, attribution makes it easier to see all the touchpoints, even if the customer journey is complex. Also, when choosing an attribution software, ensure that it includes the deanonymization feature. This can help track the entire journey of all the buying committee members, even if they browse anonymously. 

Longer sales cycle:

B2B purchases require a significant investment. Hence the decision-making process is more rigorous and complex than B2C sales. On top of that, there are contractual agreements, regulations, and budget approvals that further add up the time. 

According to Klipfolio, around 75% of B2B companies take an average of 4 months to onboard a new customer. And depending on your sales process, the time can be longer or shorter. 

Because the B2B sales cycle is complex and lengthy, it can be difficult to find out which touchpoints influenced the prospect to convert. Moreover, it can take months or years to see the results of your marketing activities. Thus, making it harder to attribute the conversion to a specific campaign. 

By using multi-touch attribution models, marketers can understand the impact of their campaigns. This would help them prioritize marketing investments and create a more engaging customer experience. 

Multiple touchpoints:

Customers often interact with your company through multiple channels before purchasing. These can be both online and offline interactions. Also, a customer can engage with your company at different stages of the buying journey. 

 For example, a customer may receive an email about a product. They then visit the company's website for more information, only to later attend a trade show and have a follow-up conversation with a sales representative. Each touchpoint could have a different impact on their decision-making process.

But, determining which touchpoints had the most significant impact can be difficult. One solution is to use an attribution tool that can track all these diverse channels and bring all the interactions together in one place.

Tracking and defining offline touchpoints:

In a B2B sales process, the customer engages with the vendors through both online and offline touchpoints. This makes it difficult to track and attribute conversions accurately, as you now need to stitch data across systems.. 

For example: consider a set of B2B customers. They attended a trade show and got on a call with your sales team. Afterward, they sign up on your website and complete the purchase. Here, it will be hard to determine credit for a touchpoint if you don't have the right attribution solution. 

Marketing analytics software, like Factors, enables tracking of both online and offline touchpoints. Factors has a click-and-select UI through which the offline touchpoints can be set up from your CRM / MAP platform. This ensures that you have a detailed view of the customer journey.

Sales-Marketing alignment:

Alignment between Marketing and Sales teams is essential to maximize returns. However, this is easier said than done. In many B2B companies, there's a lack of communication between the two teams, making it hard to reach potential customers. Fighting for credit can be a reason for this disconnect, as each team believes their efforts to be the reason for closing a deal.

 Bridging this alignment divide can be achieved in two ways.

1. Emphasize that both teams are not independent but part of a larger go-to-market function. 
2. Unify the customer journey data across marketing and sales touchpoints.
   

Sophisticated Marketing Attribution solutions such as Factors can help here by providing a clear and consistent view of the customer journey. On top of the unified data foundation, teams can get answers to questions such as 

• How many touchpoints did it take to convert a deal? How many of these were sales vs. marketing touchpoints?
• Were marketing efforts able to drive engagement with the right stakeholders in these accounts?
• When is the right time for sales teams to intervene so as to convert an account?
  

Furthermore, each team can review and analyze the attribution data to understand which of their strategies are working and which are not. From a sales perspective, such analysis can help in defining the frequency and content of email sequences, calls, and meetings that lead to maximum impact. 

Why should CMOs consider marketing attribution?

As a CMO, you are often asked to achieve better results with limited resources. Meanwhile, the buyer's journey has become complex, with more channels, stakeholders, and a longer buying cycle. Attribution Software can be a valuable guide, helping you in the following ways.

Better decision-making

By understanding the customer journey, you can determine the channels to focus on and how to allocate your limited budget. 

Improved ROI

Attribution lets you know which channels effectively drive conversions. Therefore, it allows you to allocate expenditures accordingly and generate better results.

Increased accountability

You can unambiguously measure and track your marketing effort's impact. Good or bad, you can hold yourself and your team accountable for the results while continuously finding ways to improve.

Enhanced customer understanding

You can gain a deep understanding of customer behavior and interactions with marketing and sales initiatives. You can know what types of content your customers are seeking, the landing pages they interact with, and more. This enables you to optimize future campaigns to align with the customer's interests.

You can read more about the importance of marketing attribution for CMOs here. 

How to choose the right marketing attribution tool?

‍Choosing a marketing attribution tool requires careful consideration of several factors. Some of the key considerations are

1. Data Integration: Ensure the tool integrates easily with your existing data sources. This includes your CRM, marketing automation platform, web analytics, CDPsand advertising platforms.
2. User-friendly interface: Make sure the tool is easy to set up, track campaigns, and analyze results. 
3. Model flexibility: Choose the tool that offers a range of attribution models. This way, you can choose the most appropriate one aligning with your business goals. 
4. Reporting and analysis: Check whether the tool provides robust reporting and analysis capabilities. This is important for you to understand the impact of your campaigns on lead generation and conversion.
5.  Customer support: Check the quality of the customer support offered by the vendor. It's best to choose the one who provides good technical support and training.
6. Security: Ensure the tool has robust security measures to protect your data. 
7. Cost: Consider the cost of the tool in relation to the value it can deliver to your business.
   

Ultimately, the right attribution tool for your business will depend on your specific needs and goals. Consider your budget, the data you want to track, and the level of analysis you need.

Factors is one of the leading marketing analytics and attribution tools purpose-built for the B2B segment. It can help businesses make data-driven decisions by accurately attributing conversions to the most influential touchpoints. Some of the highlights of Factors include

1. Enables attribution of offline touchpoints such as webinars, field events, and so on.
2. You can visualize the customer journey at an Account and User Level. 
3. Easily integrates with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, 6sense, Segment, and Rudderstack
4. Supports Account Level Analytics and Attribution natively
5. You can compare attribution models and select the one most aligned with your business objectives
6. Provides an extensive set of filters and breakdowns to create rapid, relevant ad hoc reports in seconds.
7. AI-fueled insights into performance, anomalies, and fluctuations. 
   

If you’re looking for a marketing analytics tool that facilitates all your attribution needs, look no further than Factors.ai. Sign up for free to learn more about Factors, or book a personalized demo today!

According to Hubspot, marketers spend nearly 210 minutes a week analyzing data from different sources. What’s interesting, though, is that marketing professionals often struggle to determine the channels that facilitate customer journeys to fuel pipeline and revenue.

Coincidence? No.  

With a gamut of channels, touchpoints, platforms, and campaigns running simultaneously, it becomes difficult to determine which marketing strategy brings value to the table. 

Especially in the case of B2B marketing, multiple online & offline channels are involved. For instance, online channels involve social media, content, email marketing, etc., whereas offline channels include ebooks, webinars, workshops, meetings, etc.  

Thankfully, marketing attribution reporting can effectively solve this problem and assist businesses in shifting from intuition-driven strategies to customer-centric and data-driven strategies. 

Attribution reporting allows marketers to do an in-depth analysis at a granular level and give a clear picture of the direct impact of marketing strategies and tactics. 

Read our blog to understand exactly what attribution reporting is and what you can learn from marketing attribution reports to put your revenue growth on the fast lane . 

Let’s get started! 

Table Of Contents

• What Is Attribution Reporting? 
• Why Use Attribution Reporting And When To Use It? 
• What You Can Learn From Marketing Attribution Reports?
• How Can Organizations Leverage Attribution Reports To Skyrocket Their Conversions?
• Bonus Information: What Is The Attribution Window 
• Wrapping Up
• FAQs

What Is Attribution Reporting? 

Attribution reporting gives you a bird's eye view of the path your customer took before converting. Moreover, it also gives an in-depth insight into how different marketing efforts have cohesively worked to fuel conversions. 

Attribution reporting will help you to determine the following. 

• From which channels are the customers first becoming aware of your brand?
• Which campaign is driving the maximum demo form submissions or signups?
• Which piece of content/ad are they interacting with between opportunity creation and closed-won?
• Provide an actionable view of the buyer’s journey across multiple stakeholders who interact with multiple touchpoints over many months. 
• A transparent overview of the channels to generate leads, nurture them and finally convert.
  

You can leverage many attribution models to create a comprehensive report, such as first interaction, last interaction, linear attribution, etc. Attribution reporting gives crystal clear insights into the specific parts of your strategy and helps you highlight the areas that need improvement. 

All in all, marketing attribution reports summarize your customer journey data by building a timeline of touchpoints at a user and account level, combine that with vital channel metrics such as impressions, clicks, and spending and visualize the insights into a cohesive and effective report

Why Use Attribution Reporting, And When To Use It? 

One of the most rewarding aspects for a marketer is to see the successful result of their efforts. Once you start noticing the number of conversions from a strategy you have implemented or a piece of content you have posted, you know you have done your job right. 

But getting conversions is just one part of the job! The most gratifying part is to be able to measure and correlate the amount spent with the business ROI. 

This is where attribution reporting comes into play. 

An attribution report is nothing but a presentable outcome of your customer journey and campaign data. Therefore, an attribution report is only as valuable as the underlying data itself. Within your Marketing Strategy, attribution fulfills the need to optimize your marketing spending, allocate resources better, scale the right initiatives, and track channel performance.

That being said, you wouldn’t want to rely on a false source of optimization or, worse, vanity metrics to determine your marketing strategy. Attribution reporting provides you a credible foundation to build a data driven marketing execution engine.

Unlike a marketing team’s requirements for tracking KPIs, which tend to be an everyday ordeal, the frequency of usage of attribution reports is determined by the following factors

• How frequently are the campaigns optimized?
• What is the conversion cycle length from first touch to revenue
• What is the cadence of executive reporting for the CMO
• How frequently are budget re-allocation decisions made at your company
  

What You Can Learn From Marketing Attribution Reports?

Here are the learnings you can expect from marketing attribution reports. 

1. Better Comparison With  Model-Based Information

Companies increasingly use a multi-channel approach to educate and inform their target audience based on their preferences.  However, when too many channels are in action, it becomes challenging to determine which channel contributed the most to pipeline and revenue. 

Attribution reporting allows marketers to determine the contribution of each channel based on the chosen model and compare the results of different types of attribution models to make your investment decisions. For example, an Influence attribution model shows the amount of pipeline and revenue influenced by each campaign or content, whereas a First Touch Attribution report only credits the campaign or content for the revenue where it was the very first touchpoint.

Further, the conversion goals in attribution can be set as Top of the Funnel KPIs such as Leads, Demos or Mid Funnel Metrics such as MQLs, SQLs or Bottom of the Funnel metrics such as Pipeline and Revenue, helping Marketers understand the influence of each channel at various stages of the funnel. 

If you are a Saas company with both a PLG flow (SignUp and then Product Milestones) as well as a sales-led flow (Demo and then Opportunity Creation), you can use attribution analysis to understand which channels are most effective for each of these go to market models.

2.  Get An Overview Of Baseline Metrics

Baseline Metrics within Attribution provide a channel-level overview of investment metrics such as Impressions, Clicks, and Spending, along with platform-specific metrics such as Keyword Match Type, Search Impression Share for Google Ads. 

Attribution reporting tools aggregate these investment metrics across channels, enabling a Marketer to understand how much are they spending by a campaign, Ad group, creative, and keyword. Using these insights, Marketers can get a complete view of the performance metrics for each Campaign.

3. Analyze Conversion Metrics

A good attribution report combines the baseline investment metrics along with conversion metrics across the funnel such as leads, demos, SQLS, pipeline, and revenue. This helps Marketing teams move beyond measuring marketing efforts on metrics such as leads and get an accurate understanding of the impact on pipeline and revenue.  

Based on this information, you can assess the following:

• How many leads does each channel or campaign generate?
• How many of these leads are then converted to demos and sales-qualified leads by the campaign?
• How much pipeline and revenue were influenced by each of these channels or campaigns?

4. To Get Clarity On ROAS 

ROAS (return on ad spend) is a crucial metric that is used to measure the total revenue generated on every dollar spent on marketing. By bringing together the investment and conversion metrics, Attribution Reports highlights the profit margin and ROAS at a campaign, ad group, creative, or keyword level.

Companies may define different ROAS thresholds based on the type of campaigns - such as Product Feature Promotion, Competitive Takeout, and Brand Building. Also, depending on whether the campaign is more experimental (entry into a new product category or new geographic territory) or a well-established one, the ROAS thresholds may be different. Granular ROAS data allows marketers to make data-informed bidding decisions resulting in cost savings and improvement in return metrics.

5. Non-Paid Channels vs Paid Channels

It has always been a struggle for Marketers to determine whether paid or non-paid channels help accelerate your sales. However, attribution reporting gives you an extensive overview of different channels (such as Paid Search, Social, Referrals, Review Sites, and Organic Content) and their contribution to pipeline and revenue.

For instance, Let’s assume your business is active on LinkedIn and drives traffic from the platform through posts and ad campaigns. But when a lead is converted through LinkedIn, you will need to know which tactic contributed to the result - Was it the organic posts or ad campaigns? 

With attribution reporting, you can determine whether the lead got converted organically from the posts you shared or the ads campaign you are running or whether both tactics played a part in the conversion. 

A distinction between direct and non-direct sources of traffic helps identify your PPC leads and your organic ones. This, in turn, helps both the paid marketing teams and the content marketing teams optimize their execution strategies.

6. Attributing Sales Funnel

Attribution reports also enable Marketers to go beyond a single conversion goal and visualize the entire marketing and sales funnel (Leads, Demos, SQLs, Pipeline, and Revenue) at a channel, campaign, or ad group level. 

Armed with this data, Marketers can get a sense of the conversion rates by channel for each stage and focus their efforts accordingly.

7. Get A Clear Picture With Data Visualization

Lastly, because the Attribution Reports and underlying data are exhaustive and cover the entire customer journey and channel mix, it may feel a bit daunting to analyze this data solely in tabular form. 

The report can include dimensions such as keywords (and associated metadata such as keyword match type), ad groups, campaigns, campaign themes, and channels, as well as metrics such as spend, impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversion metrics as well. 

Phew.. - quite a handful to analyze this table of 15+ columns and 100+ rows to unearth actionable insights. This is where intuitive visualizations play a role in facilitating a better understanding of the data through formats such as scatter plots, bar charts, and line vs bar visualizations.

Further, an AI-powered attribution tool like factors.ai  is capable of offering augmented features in a report, such as recommendations on campaign bidding, trends in cost per MQL and SQL, and much more) 

How Can Organizations Leverage Attribution Reports To Skyrocket Their Conversions?

Now that you know what you can learn from attribution reports, we will take you to the next step. After doing an in-depth attribution analysis, now is the time to take some steps to accelerate the momentum of the conversions. 

Following are some ways organizations can leverage attribution reports:  

1. To Create A Result-Driven Content Strategy 

A crucial part of online marketing is creating a content strategy to ensure that the content created will be focused on the customer journey stage they are in. 

With attribution data, marketers can get an overview of the entire customer journey and leverage it to build a result-driven content strategy. 

2. Where Should You Expend Your Marketing Efforts? 

We all know attribution reporting gives deep insights into which channels drive conversions and users. Therefore, we can focus on those specific channels and generate maximum leads.  

3. To Fully Understand The Customer’s Journey 

You may know which channel drove the conversions, but you should also know about the touchpoints your customer interacted with before converting. 

Attribution reporting has the capability to do so, and therefore, it allows you to fully understand the customer’s journey right from the start till the end. 

Understanding this will allow you to create more effective strategies and journey paths that are aligned with buyer preferences.

Bonus Information: What Is The Attribution Window? 

An attribution window, also known as a conversion window, is the timeframe within which conversion will be attributed to a touchpoint. In layperson’s words, it can be defined as a time frame between which a potential lead viewed/clicked on your ad/piece of content and later performed your desired conversion action

 For example, suppose your attribution window is 20 days. In that case, any touchpoints (like users interacting with your landing page) incurred by prospects will only be linked to a conversion (actions like a demo request) if it occurred within 20 days of the touchpoint. Attribution windows also help distinguish your fresh leads from your re-engaged ones and hence remove the impact of interactions that happened a while ago.

The total number of conversions can be skewed if you don’t set the right attribution window. If you look it up, they’re different recommendations on setting an attribution window. Some recommend as little as 7 days, while others suggest 90 or 180 days. 

Setting the attribution window is largely dependent on the expected conversion cycle from first visit to revenue as well as the internal understanding among Go to Market teams (Sales and Marketing) on what would be the appropriate conversion window. Our recommendation would be to compute your average conversion cycle based on historical data and set double that value, post aligning with the sales team.

Wrapping Up

Without a doubt, we can say that attribution reporting is the most effective way to understand and measure the impact of Marketing Efforts on business outcomes. Insights generated from marketing attribution can become your most valuable asset to drive maximum ROI. 

When picking a solution to power your Attribution reporting, you want the best of the best. So keep your eyes peeled for solutions that offer capabilities such as:

• Bring in touchpoints from across data sources - such as website events (digital marketing)and offline touchpoints (webinars, events, e-books, sales calls, and meetings)
  

• Attributing your entire marketing and sales funnel stages and rather than focusing on a single conversion point such as Leads.
• Present both baseline investment metrics and conversion metrics, with the computation of ROI at a channel, campaign, ad group, keyword, page URL, or Theme level.
• Has advanced features to distinguish between new business vs expansions or new leads vs reactivated ones.
  

Opting for a solution that has these capabilities and more can take your attribution reporting to the next level.

Get started with attribution reporting with Factors.ai 

Factors.ai is an AI-empowered attribution reporting tool that helps you to fuel your marketing efforts by effectively comparing and customizing attribution models to generate a clearer picture based on metrics. 

Factors.ai has the capability to create attribution reports at both company and user levels, can track both website and non-website events, and has a customized dashboard that collects and visualizes all crucial data in one place.

If you’re interested in taking your business to next level by analyzing your marketing efforts with robust multi-touch attribution modeling and deep data-driven insights to make an informed decision then, schedule a demo and start for FREE at factors.ai.

FAQs ‍

1. What does attribution mean in marketing?

In marketing, attribution refers to the process of identifying and assigning credit to the various marketing channels and touchpoints that contribute to a conversion [or any desired action]. 

By understanding the effectiveness of these different marketing channels, businesses can optimize their marketing budget and resources to maximize their ROI.

2. Why is attribution reporting important for marketers in 2023? 

Attribution reporting provides a holistic view of how different marketing channels work together to drive conversions and revenue. It enables marketers to see which channels drive the most conversions and revenue and which are driving the most users to their website or mobile app. 

With this information, marketers can make more informed decisions about where to allocate their marketing budget and resources.

Marketing today looks nothing like it did just a few years ago. You need to keep an eye on numerous campaigns on various channels, understand where your users are coming from, what drives them, possibilities of churn, and endless optimizations. For tasks like these, companies can’t help but rely on B2B marketing tools like Factors.ai and Bizible. 

Well-known in the marketing space, both of these tools come with a variety of capabilities and functionalities for analytics, attribution, personalization, and optimization to help B2B firms make better-informed marketing decisions. 

But how do you know which one’s right for you?

The following blog delves into the features offered by them and a comparative analysis of their respective strengths and weaknesses in the marketing analytics field. Curious how one of these tools can become part of your marketing arsenal? In this article, we’re covering everything from the features to pricing, integrations and even reviews for both Bizible and Factors! 

About Bizible

Bizible (now Marketo Measure) is a widely-used attribution tool aimed at providing B2B and B2C marketers with insights on their customer journey and revenue impact. It does so with strong touchpoint tracking and attribution modeling.

Bizible Integrations

The Adobe Marketo Measure (previously Bizible) extends its functionality to seamlessly integrate other tools to collect information on web source, medium, keyword, cookies, visitor behavior. Using this you can optimise your marketing strategies accordingly. Here are some of the tools that are supported by Bizible: 

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM (for custom objects, pre-built CRM reports, templates and dashboards)
• Marketo Engage 
• WordPress
• Salesforce Sales Cloud
• HubSpot Marketing Hub

Bizible Features

• Dedicated A/B testing integration, lets you track the revenue impact of your Optimizely and VWO site experiment. These experiments can provide insight to your marketing team to help optimize their campaigns and improve ROI.There are a few types of Marketo Measure A/B reports available to customers, which enable reporting on A/B Test results regarding leads, contacts, and opportunities.
• Dedicated Boomerang stage feature was designed to enhance visibility into the customer's journey, particularly for customers with extended sales cycles. Marketers are empowered by this feature to establish touchpoints at every stage transition throughout the Opportunity journey. For example, it captures scenarios where a contact progresses from MQL to SAL and subsequently returns to the MQL stage. This is known as the boomerang stage, or when contacts "re-enter the MQL stage" or "re-MQL." The Boomerang Stage feature seamlessly integrates with the Marketo Measure Custom Stages, working together to enhance the functionality.
  

• Multi-currency Compatibility which allows users to switch between different currencies for their reported spend and sales revenue. Currently, this feature covers  these two metrics.
  

About Factors. ai 

A compelling alternative to Bizible, Factors. ai comes into the picture as an AI-fueled marketing analytics and attribution platform that works with SME and mid-market B2B companies like Razorpay, Chargebee and Clickhouse. Not only does Factors.ai offer robust attribution capabilities, but it also provides a user-friendly interface and intuitive reporting tools. The platform is divided into 4 broad categories: 

1. Marketing and website analytics
2. Marketing attribution 
3. Journeys analytics 
4. Account identification.

Factors. ai Integrations

Factors has the ability to connect with advertising platforms, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and customer data platforms (CDPs). Consequently, it can be used to track user actions across various touch points on a website, analyze campaign information, and even gather data from events recorded in the CRM. This comprehensive integration enables holistic analysis and reporting of data.

Factors. ai Features

Factors.ai comes bundled with unique features that aid attribution. 

1. User/account timeline: showcases all touchpoints for all users across their conversion journey over a span of time presented neatly on a timeline graph. This feature helps businesses identify valuable touchpoint data for all its users that can pinpoint every single step of every user’s conversion journey.
2. Customizable Stage Transitions: With this feature, users can track and optimize the customer journey by defining and customizing stage transitions that align with your unique sales cycles, allowing for granular analysis of each stage.
3. User-Friendly Interface: Users can enjoy a seamless and intuitive platform that makes it easy to navigate, visualize data, and access actionable insights, ensuring effortless usage for marketers of all skill levels.
4. Cross-Channel Analysis: It is also possible to analyze the performance of your marketing efforts across multiple channels, such as digital advertising, social media, email marketing, and more, to understand the synergistic effects and optimize cross-channel strategies.

How do the two compare?

Here is a table comparing the features that Bizible and Factors. ai come with:

In the next few paragraphs we will look at their strengths and weaknesses when pitted against each other with respect to integrations, attribution, onboarding and implementation, reporting quality, pricing, and privacy and compliance.

1. Integration

There are some points to consider when comparing the integration features of their tools. First off, the tools that these apps integrate with, do not completely overlap. For instance, Factors. ai does not integrate with Microsoft Dynamics Integration- Bizible does, and Bizible does not integrate with CDPs, which Factors. ai does. Second, Factors. Ai offers out-of-the-box integrations while Bizible comes with high developer dependency for tasks such as tracking HubSpot landing pages or integrating with LinkedIn.

Bizible can integrate with a wide range of applications and platforms. These popular apps span across CRM, CMS, marketing automation, email marketing, advertising platforms, web and sales analytic tools. Some of these commonly used platforms are Marketo, Google Ads, WordPress, MailChimp, Outreach and SalesLoft. 

Factors. Ai can also integrate with similar ad platforms, CRMs, and CDPs. CDP helps improve data quality, identify new audiences, and connect behavioral data. At the moment, Factors can integrate with third-party CDPs like Segment. 

2. Attribution

B2B marketing attribution is like detective work for marketers, uncovering the hidden fingerprints of success. It's an process that delves deep into the influence of various marketing touchpoints on coveted conversion goals, such as demos, pipeline growth, and revenue generation. The process involves employing a variety of multi-touch attribution models to evaluate and quantify the contribution of each marketing touchpoint towards achieving these objectives.

Factors. ai and Bizible both offer marketing attribution capabilities. They share a few similarities and differences.

Channels and Subchannels

Marketing Channels serve the purpose of categorizing and organizing your marketing activities for convenient reporting in both the Marketo Measure ROI Dashboard and your CRM system. Bizible offers 40 custom channels, which can be customized and renamed according to your organization's preferences. The Marketing Channel represents the broadest level of classification, encompassing various Subchannels. These Subchannels can be viewed as the specific "type" of source through which your leads are generated. Examples of Marketing Channels include Paid Search, Organic Search, Display, and Paid Social. Subchannels play a significant role in indicating the specific version or variation of the Marketing Channel used to attract leads.

Currently, Bizible offers 40 custom channels and 200 subchannels.  Channels and subchannels in Bizible attribution categorize and organize marketing touchpoints, providing insights into the performance of different marketing sources. This helps marketers understand the effectiveness of various channels and subchannels in driving conversions and revenue, informing decision-making and optimization strategies.

A business growing at a fast pace might opt for more channels to avoid chances of narrowing attribution and analytics. Factors.ai attribution does not specifically use the terminology of ‘channels’ and ‘subchannels’ in the same way as Bizible. Instead, Factors.ai focuses on integrating various data sources, such as ad platforms, CRMs, and CDPs, to provide a holistic view of marketing performance and customer journeys. It analyzes the impact of different touchpoints and events across the customer journey, offering comprehensive insights into marketing effectiveness and revenue attribution.

Attribution models: Factors.ai has the capability to create attribution reports at both company and user levels, can track both website and non-website events, and has a customized dashboard that collects and visualizes all crucial data in one place. Factors.ai also delivers 9 attribution models that include influence, time-decay, U-shaped and W-shaped.

Bizible offers 6 different attribution models that can help marketers decide what touchpoints are impactful in the customer journey. These are Lead creation, First-touch, U- shaped, W- shaped, Full- Path, and the Custom model. 

Attribution model funnels and metrics:

Bizible and Factors. ai both provide a range of metrics and filters to analyze attribution models and measure marketing performance. Here are some of the key metrics and filters offered: 

1. Revenue Attribution: Measures the revenue generated by each touchpoint or marketing source, providing insights into their contribution to the bottom line.
2. Conversion Attribution: Determines the contribution of each touchpoint to conversion events, allowing you to understand which marketing efforts are driving conversions.
3. Touchpoint Influence: Measures the influence of a specific touchpoint on conversions or revenue, providing a granular view of individual touchpoint performance.

These platforms also allow filters like: 

1. Time-based Filters: Can be used to analyze attribution data within specific time frames, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or custom date ranges.
2. Revenue Range Filters: You can set filters to analyze attribution data within specific revenue ranges, allowing you to focus on different tiers of revenue generation.

The difference between the two lies in Factors’ AI- driven approach to provide attribution models. With this information, you can dynamically allocate credit to marketing touchpoints based on their actual impact on revenue and conversions, and also forecast future performance by availing predictive analytics. Factors. ai also emphasizes seamless integration with CRM systems and marketing platforms.

3. Onboarding and Implementation

Setting up Bizible requires some level of dependency on developers. You might also require technical support from your development team for processes like creating a custom model. As per reviews on g2, the onboarding process can take a few months to fully complete. On the whole, Bizible works as a solid attribution tool, but reviewers often report problems with the onboarding and implementation.

Factors offers a quicker onboarding process of under 30 minutes, without requiring heavy-duty technical assistance. Factors’ tracking script can be set up directly or through Google Tag Manager in only a few minutes. Find out more about the process here. In case you're facing any difficulties, you can also get in touch with Factors' customer support team available round the clock.

4. Analytics/Reporting

Bizible has a wide selection of drill-through data. You can access marketing reports on the revenue by channel, closed revenue, contacts created, opportunities created, closed deals etc. It provides snapshots of CRM at any point in time and the distribution of records across opportunity stages.

Factors.ai can also extract and analyze relevant data points to give you a comprehensive overview of your customer relationships and interactions.The snapshot provided by Factors.ai may include key CRM metrics and visualizations, such as pipeline value, conversion rates, sales velocity, lead distribution, and performance trends. This enables you to have a holistic view of your CRM data and track the progress of your sales and marketing activities.

Bizible and Factors.ai both give you the option to visualize marketing data the way you want. If you connect to a business intelligence (BI) platform, you can present data with more flexible visual options. Standard metrics like bounce rates and monthly visitors are available on both Factors and Bizible, when integrated with data analytics platforms. 

5. Pricing

Bizible's pricing information is not available on their website. That said, according to reviews online, Bizible is 5% and 6% more expensive than the average attribution production, for small and mid sized businesses respectively. 

This is not very convenient for SMEs and startups. However, according to GetApp, Bizible scores high with 4.8 out of 5 stars on the value of money rating. They allow a maximum of 25 users per plan. It is important to note that this number can vary with lower plans. 

Factors. ai pricing is geared to cater to startups and SMEs. Their high tier growth plan is more affordable for these businesses and comes with customer support and functionality. They also offer specific plans that are purpose-built for your business’s unique analytical and attribution requirements. They also allow unlimited users per plan. 

What is the right option for you?

Ultimately, the choice between Bizible and Factors.ai depends on your specific requirements and priorities. Bizible may be a good fit if you prioritize strong touchpoint tracking and existing integrations with tools like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Marketo Engage. Furthermore, Bizible pricing is considered appropriately priced by users. On the other hand, Factors.ai offers AI-driven attribution models, customization options, and a user-friendly interface, making it a compelling option for those seeking a more agile and appropriate solution for startups and SMEs.

Consider your business's needs, budget, and desired features to determine which platform aligns best with your goals and will empower your marketing team to make better-informed decisions. The choice between the two depends on the specific requirements, the importance placed on factors such as AI-driven attribution, customization, predictive analytics, and user interface. Evaluating these differences can help determine which platform better aligns with your organization's marketing measurement requirements in terms of attribution modeling and the depth of integration needed. If you’re interested in seeing how Factors.ai could align with your business, schedule a personalized demo here. 

Wondering how Factors fares against other top analytics tools? Here are some quick reads: 

1. Factors vs Google Analytics
2. Factors Amplitude
3. Factors vs Dreamdata
4. Factors vs HubSpot Analytics